From what I’ve seen on my own journey, there are 2 paths you can take through life if you’re interested in simple abundance, how to be happy, inner peace, personal or spiritual development, spiritual awakening, etc.:
- The Change, Fix, And Improve Path
- The Truth Path
In this post, I’m going to introduce the Change, Fix, And Improve Path. I’ll come back to The Truth Path in another post.
On the Change, Fix, And Improve Path, your life is dominated by goals, objectives, and wanting to produce specific results to change your life, fix what appears broken in your life, and improve your life.
The Change, Fix, And Improve Path is dominated by techniques and strategies — steps for you to take, things for you to do, things for you to practice to get what you want.
There’s a never-ending assembly line of techniques and strategies moving through the world.
And throughout history.
That claim to be able to deliver results, including simple abundance.
There’s always a “flavor of the day” that everyone is excited about and is convinced is the magic bullet they’ve always dreamed about: this manifestation technique, that manifestation technique, the law of attraction, whatever.
There are also the old standbys that have been around forever: visualization, affirmations, changing beliefs, thought and mind control, etc.
Whenever we get ahold of a technique that looks promising, we get very excited and throw ourselves into using it to get what we want.
And then REALITY sets in.
There are 2 BIG problems with the Change, Fix, And Improve Path:
- The techniques don’t work reliably. Never have. Never will. I seem to be one of the few people out there seeing this and being willing to be brutally honest about it.
- The list of things you want to change, fix and improve never ends. Never has. Never will. There’s always something else in your life that isn’t OK as it is, that would be better of it were different or gone ,or if something else showed up instead.
So, if the number of things you want to change, fix and improve never ends, and the techniques you use to try to get what you want don’t work reliably to get them, what’s the inevitable result?
You’ll end up exhausted, frustrated, and unhappy — and really “down” on self-help stuff, on all the techniques and strategies and the people who gave them to you.
Odds are , you know what I mean here because you’ve already experienced it — and/or are experiencing it now.
If you haven’t, you will.
Guaranteed.
I could write multiple books on this topic but that’s enough for today.
Next time, I’ll write about The Truth Path, which is the ONLY way out of the “rat race” explained above, the ONLY way to get what you REALLY want, the only path into simple abundance (a term I really like by the way).
Stay tuned.
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Thank you Robert for these concise statement of what I’d call the fundamental paradox of spiritual development: “I want to ‘grow’ spiritually and this goal itself is the main obstacle in seeing the truth.”
And yet some of the Path 1 tools I tried over the years have also guided me onto Path 2 because they included techniques to become present – which is synonym to seeing the Truth.
In other words: sneakily they knocked out part of the cloud cover. And they made my Human Game much more sufferable. E.g. after two marriages with considerable drama today I’m enjoying a relationship free of conflict and power struggles.
The mind-twisting paradox is that if you let go of the outcome, the outcome tends to exceed all expectations you ever had before.
In my experience, sex, health, money and power is what people gets on the hook of spiritual development, and only after some frustration they gradually open up to teachings like yours (like I did).
Thank you,
Björn
PS: Would you agree with me that the following teachers also teach Path 2? Nisargadatta Maharaj, Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi. I’d highly appreciate your answer on that 🙂
My pleasure, Bjorn!
My journey has been unique and has created within me a unique Experience and Vision of what The Truth is, and what path or paths can lead to a direct Experience of it.
In short, I’m very biased, and therefore tend to see and say “Yes, but …” or “No, not really…” to parts or all of what many other Teachers share.
“Phase 2” is a term I use to describe a specific focus when playing The Human Game. Using the language I prefer, playing the Phase 2 Game involves going into the Cloud Cover, drilling tunnels, poking holes, knocking out chunks, and allowing The Truth to be Experienced.
Taking that literally, I would *not* say that the people you mention above teach “Phase 2” – although their Teachings can be very supportive and do help many people playing *different* games.
I’m not well versed in the details of the teachings of the 4 people you mention. However, from what I do know, I would say that Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ramana Maharshi were actually pointing to what I now call “Phase 3” and I actually quote Maharaj and one of his students in my “Being In Truth Experience.”
Thank you very much, Robert!
I notice your answer surprised me a little. Maybe I haven’t really understood what you refer to as Phase 2 Game.
I totally agree about Maharaj and Maharshi and the pointers to Phase 3.
After having read “1000 Names for Joy” by Byron Katie I am pretty sure that she points to Phase 3, too. Simply put: She is happy regardless what happens. And as I understand it, what she calls “The Work”, actually is a tool to knock out the Cloud Cover. So to me it looks like a Phase 2 Game.
Slightly different process, slightly different wording, but in essence the same.
And this might be a philosophical discussion 🙂
I have only read “Busting Loose from the Money Game” – is there any book by you in which you talk about what you call Phase 3?
There are no Phase 3 books available yet although there will be.
The only Phase 3 creation I’ve made available is the 24 week “Being In Truth Experience.”
This is a philosophical discussion, and a tough one to have without precisely defining terms, comparing, contrasting, etc.
I generally stay away from discussing other people, models, and systems for this reason. It ends up being what I call “a dance of ideas and concepts” without much real value.
I must also say that from my Experience, not a rule or formula, but what I’ve seen over and over for myself and many others (across numerous authors, models and systems), books are great starting points but they rarely lead to the Big Breakthroughs on their own.
It usually takes Experiential dynamics and support to avoid or get out of what I call “quicksand traps,” “mind games,” and once again, “the dance of ideas and concepts” which are all so seductive.